She recognized Dar’s name, but said that Fraulein Klein no longer lived there. She sat him down in a parlor full of knickknacks and shuffled away to make tea, which she served in ornate Austrian china.
Dar realized immediately that the woman was testing him as she sipped and probed in her solid, direct hausfrau’s way. “I think I can set you at ease about my intentions,” he smiled. “I intend to marry Dani, if she’ll still have me.” And then he showed her the letter.
The woman’s reaction was unexpected. As silent tears began to slide down her cheeks, she said haltingly, “I show you this not because I choose. Because she chose. I hope you will walk away and leave me withwhat I have of her. But kommensie,” she said, and led him to a small room.
It was a pleasant room, its windows overlooking a tiny formal garden. He recognized a scarf of Dani’s, hanging from a cotton string, its gay paisley print an ever-changing mobile over the crib. In the crib, an infant of perhaps three months slept.
“This is all we will have of Dani,” said the woman, barely above a whisper. “She survived the birth only three days.”
When he could think coherently again, Dar asked for details and got them with cheap brandy in that oppressive little parlor. The one detail of which he was certain was that he intended to keep his tiny daughter, now that he had found her. Had he not chosen to seek Dani, to marry her after all his simpleminded philosophizing, he would never have known why she had been so plump in their last times together. Nor why she had warned him that his choice involved “… the dread rigors of a family man.”
Had Dani suspected that she might die in childbirth? He would never know. He knew only that she had chosen to bear his child, and to raise it alone if necessary. And when the tiny child awoke, crying for her bottle, it was Dar who fed her, the good hausfrau seemingly resigned to her loss already.
Dar took no chances on that. He called in one more favor and boarded a Company proprietary turboprop, flying straight to New Haven with Dani’s daughter in his arms. Phil and Andrea Leigh met him at the airport, and Dar talked all the way to Old Lyme.
Andrea, for once, remained speechless for an hour. She had chosen to remain childless for years and then, ironically, found that she was barren. To Phil’s suggestion that they adopt a child, Andrea had always refused. She would raise a Weston and a Leigh, or she would remain childless. Now, with an abruptness that staggered her, Andrea faced a possibility she had never imagined. Dar Weston was prepared to raise the girl himself, but there was an alternative, one that would give Dani’s child both a mother and a father who was no absentee.
To her credit, Andrea Weston Leigh was indecisive on only one point: should she obtain adoption papers, or spend a year in Vermont? Phil, with a deep understanding of social nuance among Connecticut families, made that decision, determined to raise the girl as his own.
They made only one mistake. While Andrea was dropping subtle hints about pregnancy in Old Lyme, Dar spent two weeks near Bennington, Vermont, with the tiny girl, whom Andrea had named “Petra.” In that time, Dar learned how to rinse a diaper in a commode and how to test the temperature of a bottle of formula. And he learned that a man’s deepest, most passionate tenderness for a woman cannot plumb the depths of his commitment as profoundly as the heartbeat of his child in his arms. By the time Andrea arrived in Vermont, Dar knew that he must somehow overcome his emotional links, become an uncle and not a father. He had sworn it, and he would do it.
For twenty-two years he thought that he had succeeded.
As Dar gazed blindly out of the Lear’s porthole, he was roused from his reverie by Ben Ullmer, who was speaking into his headset. “Go ahead, Bumblebee, Hornet’s on the circuit.”
Terry Unruh, in Elmira, sounded upbeat and crisp. “Forensics crew at Sugar Grove has identified your bandit, Hornet. Seems that high-octane fuel stripped away a little of the cement on his fingers. They got two partials and a thumb, no question about it.”
“Don’t make me wait,” Dar said ominously.
“Former Snake Pit designer, reported killed in a boating accident years ago. Ex-Company too, fellow named Kyle Corbett.”
“Sonofa bitch,” said Ullmer.
Dar could only nod, his mouth suddenly dry, his breathing shallow as a wave of heat climbed the back of his neck. How could Corbett still be alive after all the evidence to the contrary? Well, he had obviously survived and if anyone could steal that Goddamned airplane, it would be Corbett. It all added up; in the intimacy of their friendship while thousands of miles from home, Dar had told Corbett things he had sworn to withhold. Kyle Corbett knew about Petra, and obviously he knew a great deal about revenge.
NINETEEN
“Yeah, that’s it,” said Corbett, talking the girl through her motions, the graceful swept wings responding to her hand on the copilot’s control stick. “She’s going to want to bank to the left when I’m hanging out there; drag and weight both. You’ve got to keep ‘er on an even keel.”
Petra’s voice was tight, and held a quaver. “Just don’t fall. You know I can’t land this thing.” She had seemed willing to wrestle that plastic fuel bag from its niche, but as Corbett explained his desperate move her eyes had grown round with fear.
“We’re only doing forty miles an hour, Petra,” he grunted, turning around so that his rump nudged the instrument console, loosening his restraint harness as far as it would go. “It ought to be easy,” he said, hoping.
And it had better be damned quick, he reminded himself. Ten pounds of fuel remained in the tank; call it a gallon and a half. They were a mile high over the swampy plains of southeastern Georgia, with twenty pounds of avgas in that bag, stinking up the cockpit with fumes. Who had decided the fuel filler cap should be mounted flush in the hellbug’s skin directly behind the pilot? He couldn’t recall. All that mattered now was whether he could fight the airstream, hanging halfway out of his hatch facing aft, and feed that fuel in while trusting his own hostage to keep the aircraft steady. Too many ironies to count. Focus on hooking those straps so they loop around a thigh and an arm, he commanded himself. And don’t think about what happens if you get hung up outside and she has to ride the hellbug down with a dead engine. Time to think about that when it happens. Meanwhile, see that it doesn’t.
Corbett forced himself to grin and wink as he opened his hatch. The girl reacted silently, as if he had just made a repulsive joke, then stared ahead. Good. Now if he could just force the hatch halfway up with his right arm and shoulderto reach out and findthatbigfiller cap. Got it. Few inches farther back than I thought, almost in the duct. Wind blast isn’t so bad but suction toward the duct gets hairy here. Snap the cap’s lever and twist. Careful; pull the cap in and drop it in the seat. He had feared that the airstream would siphon the remaining fuel out, so he had throttled back until Black Stealth One was barely controllable by a novice. “So far, so good,” he said, his head halfway out, hauling the fuel bag to the lip of the hatch. The girl did not reply.
Eighteen inches below the hatch lip lay a tiny trapdoor, a spring-loaded fairing. It had been designed as a flush-mounted step, so that a pilot could shove inward with his toes and plant his foot during entry or exit. It remained to be seen whether he could stick his heel into that niche, while facing backward toward the hellbug’s great inlet scoop. The inward curve of the skin made it fiendishly tough for a man with short, thick legs.
Facing backward, sliding his right leg over the hatch sill, Corbett found that he could not reach that foothold unless he slipped more of his other leg free of the harness; and this was not a good time for a man without a parachute to look down. Inching out, he felt his heel connect with something that yielded. He began to push down with that heel, trying to straighten his leg. Slowly, using all his strength, he began to rise, the hatch heavy across his right shoulder because of the wind load.